Women in the Oil and Gas Industry
Women make up about 22% of the oil and gas workforce. The history runs from pioneers in the 1890s to BP's first woman CEO, with the current numbers.
Women make up about 22% of the oil and gas workforce, according to the 2021 count by the World Petroleum Council and Boston Consulting Group, and that share has not changed since 2017. Their history in the industry is more than a century old: a piano teacher running wells in the 1890s, a field geologist in the 1910s, and three micropaleontologists who changed how oil was found in the 1920s.[4][5]
California's Oil Queen
One of the earliest examples is Emma Summers. She was born in Kentucky in 1858, the daughter of a banker, and graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1879. She married Alpha Summers, settled in Los Angeles and taught piano. When she arrived in 1892 the city was in an oil boom. The following year she put $700 saved from teaching into a half share of a well near her home.[2]
The early results were mixed and she had setbacks. She kept going, taught herself the details of the trade, bought more wells and ran the business herself. A 1912 Sunset article called her an expert in testing oil. By the early 1900s the press was calling her California's Oil Queen, and in 1901 the San Francisco Call described her as a woman with a genius for affairs. As the boom faded so did her fortune, and by 1915 she had largely stepped back. She died in 1941.[2]
Reba Masterson in the Field
Reba Masterson, who attended the University of Texas from 1908 to 1912, was the daughter of an oil company director. After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1916 she went into business for herself. As an independent geologist she turned up at new wells and offered her expertise in exchange for mineral rights. She crossed the South and Midwest in a Model T Ford, with a .32 pistol and a friend. She joined the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in 1923, and when she died in 1969 she held mineral rights in more than 20 Texas counties.[3] That history was later forgotten. When Robbie Gries entered the industry in the 1970s, companies did not send women to well sites.
Three Micropaleontologists in Houston
In 1919 Edwin Dumble, chief geologist of Rio Bravo Oil, wanted to study the Gulf Coast's rock layers through fossils. He called the geology department at Berkeley looking for a paleontologist for the summer. When the head of department asked, "We haven't a man; will a woman do?", Dumble replied that he saw no reason a woman couldn't do it better.[3] So Esther Richards, born in Ohio in 1895, came to Houston. She finished her master's and joined the staff the next year. Her findings went to a group of four companies, two of which soon hired their own paleontologists. University of Texas graduates Alva Ellisor went to Humble and Hedwig Kniker to The Texas Company. The firms were rivals, but the three women shared a home and talked over the day's work in the evenings.[1][3]
The problem was that larger shelled fossils were shattered by the drill bit and could not be identified. Ellisor noticed that foraminifera, microscopic single-celled creatures, survived intact in cuttings from the well and varied from layer to layer. Humble's chief geologist Wallace Pratt told her to keep it secret, then leaked the news to Dumble himself.[3]
Persuading the scientific community took longer. In 1921 Richards presented a paper by Dumble at a meeting of the Geological Society of America. Professor Galloway of Columbia stood up, dismissed her as a girl just out of college, and said, "Gentlemen, you know it can't be done." Richards wrote it in her journal. Four years later the three women published a paper in the AAPG bulletin that used foraminifera to work out the subsurface of the Texas and Louisiana coastal plain. Foraminifera remained the standard for correlating layers for decades, until well logging and seismic methods arrived.[3]
Their paths then diverged. Ellisor spent her whole career at Humble and retired in 1947. Kniker consulted and later set up a laboratory at Punta Arenas in Chile. Richards married the geologist Paul Applin in 1923, became known as Esther Applin and moved to the US Geological Survey in 1944. Her AAPG membership ended when she married, while her husband kept his. That was common practice at the time.[1][3]
Hired in Wartime, Sent Home in Peacetime
AAPG records put numbers on the war's effect. Before it, one or two women joined each year. Between 1939 and 1945, with men away, 50 women joined. After the war only 14 of them remained in the industry. Women were expected to give their jobs back to returning men.[3]
One career sums up the postwar years. After earning her geology degree in 1950, Susan Cage started at Gulf Oil as a file clerk and was promoted to geologist only after three years. Her husband joined the same company two years later as a geologist, on a salary 60% higher than hers. Cage eventually became a manager, and when she retired in 1983 her pension was adjusted to match that of comparable men. At the University of Texas geology department, women earned only 3% of master's degrees between 1943 and 1973.[3]
Wanda Jablonski, the Industry's Reporter
In the same years the industry's best-informed reporter was a woman. Wanda Jablonski was born in Czechoslovakia in 1920, the daughter of a Polish petroleum geologist, and grew up around the oil business. She studied at Cornell and Columbia, became oil editor of the Journal of Commerce, and made her name with a 1948 interview in Caracas with Venezuela's oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo. She is credited with introducing him to the Saudi oil official Abdullah Tariki in Cairo in 1959. The agreement from that meeting was a forerunner of OPEC, founded the following year. In 1961 she started Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and ran it until 1988. Yergin calls her the most influential oil journalist of her time.[9]
Doors Opening in the 1970s
Two things brought women back. Affirmative action legislation passed in 1972, and the oil shortages of the early 1970s raised demand for geoscientists. Companies began looking for women geologists. At the University of Texas, women's share of master's degrees rose to 27% between 1974 and 1993. The field opened later. Women had to fight company rules, one at a time, that kept them off offshore rigs, out of mines and away from well sites.[3]
The best-known figure of this generation is Robbie Gries. In 1966 she got into a field camp at Colorado State that was normally closed to women, with the chairman on sabbatical and an offer to cook. She took a master's at the University of Texas and entered the industry in the 1970s. She founded Priority Oil & Gas in 1994 and served as the AAPG's first woman president in 2001 and 2002. Her 2017 book Anomalies collected the stories of the first 100 women members of the AAPG and those who came later.[3][10]
At the Top of the Companies
The first woman to head a major American oil company was Vicki Hollub. She studied mineral engineering at the University of Alabama and started at Cities Service in 1981. Occidental bought the company in 1982. Hollub worked in Russia, Venezuela and Ecuador, and from 2005 led the expansion in the Permian Basin. She became CEO in April 2016 and handed over to Richard Jackson in June 2026.[11] The first woman to run a supermajor is Meg O'Neill, an ExxonMobil veteran who ran Woodside and took over at BP on 1 April 2026.[6]
The Numbers Today
The most detailed source is the Untapped Reserves study by the World Petroleum Council and Boston Consulting Group. Its 2021 report breaks the figures down: 15% women in exploration and production, 22% in pipelines and storage, 23% in refining and distribution, 4% in field services and 43% in corporate functions.[5] These numbers do not match other sources exactly. McKinsey's 2019 report puts women at about 15% of the industry.[7] Offshore Technology says about 20% for energy as a whole and about 22% for oil and gas. Citing the International Energy Agency, the same article gives under 5% for pipeline transport, which does not fit the 22% above.[4]
The gap is larger at senior level. On the Agency's 2019 company data, women held 12.1% of senior management and board positions at oil and gas firms, against 15.5% at non-energy firms.[12] The statement in Offshore Technology's 2026 article that the share in senior leadership is below 1% names no source and does not fit that figure.[4]
The Mid-Career Loss
The McKinsey report shows where women are lost. About a third of entry-level staff are women, against 41% in other technical industries. Their share falls 31% from entry level to manager and another 38% from vice president to senior vice president. Women who reach senior vice president are nearly three times as likely to leave as men, at 269 women per 100 men. One obstacle the report identifies is the expectation of international or remote postings before promotion, since these often fall in the years when people start families.[7]
The Picture at Sea
On ships the share is lower still. The 2021 BIMCO and ICS seafarer workforce report estimated certified women at about 1.28% of the global seafaring workforce, or 24,059 people.[8] The IMO declared 18 May the International Day for Women in Maritime, first marked in 2022. A 2021 IMO and WISTA survey found women made up 29% of the sector's shore-based workforce and 20% of national maritime administrations.[13] The structure of the fleet is covered in maritime transport.
Frequently asked questions
What share of the oil industry is made up of women?
About 22%, according to the 2021 count by the World Petroleum Council and Boston Consulting Group. McKinsey's 2019 report gives about 15%.
Who were the early women pioneers in oil?
Emma Summers, who began running wells in 1893, the independent geologist Reba Masterson, and Esther Richards, Alva Ellisor and Hedwig Kniker, who established the foraminifera method.
Who was the first woman to run a major oil company?
Vicki Hollub of Occidental (2016) at a major American oil company, and Meg O'Neill of BP (2026) at a supermajor.
What share of seafarers are women?
About 1.28% of the global seafaring workforce, or 24,059 people, according to the 2021 BIMCO and ICS report.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Esther Applin.
- Wikipedia. Emma Summers.
- Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas. Women in UT Geology, November 2017.
- Offshore Technology. Breaking the Glass Grid: Women in the Energy Workforce, 8 March 2026.
- Hydrocarbon Engineering. Oil and Gas Industry Risks Stalling on Diversity and Inclusion, 10 December 2021; Energy Council, Untapped Reserves 2.0, 2022.
- Fortune. BP's Meg O'Neill, 18 December 2025; World Oil, 18 December 2025.
- McKinsey & Company. How Women Can Help Fill the Oil and Gas Industry's Talent Gap, 2019 (Oilfield Technology, 18 December 2019).
- BIMCO and ICS. Seafarer Workforce Report, 2021 edition (PortNews summary, July 2021).
- Wikipedia. Wanda Jablonski; Pipeline & Gas Journal, Wanda Jablonski Pioneered Energy Reporting, July 2009.
- Wikipedia. Robbie Gries.
- Wikipedia. Vicki Hollub.
- International Energy Agency. Women in Senior Management Roles at Energy Firms Remains Stubbornly Low.
- gCaptain. Today Marks the First International Day for Women in Maritime, 18 May 2022; IMO and WISTA survey, 2021.
